


Prejudiced

by kesomon



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Episode Tag, Gen, Prejudice, Temporal Perception, Time Lord Biology, Unintentional Racism, fixed point
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-06-18
Updated: 2007-06-18
Packaged: 2018-08-18 07:31:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8154002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kesomon/pseuds/kesomon
Summary: He can't explain it. Can't put it into words that a human could understand.Jack Harkness is Wrong.It's Charley all over again, and maybe that's what hurts the most.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Missing/expanded bit of the Doctor's mental process from Utopia. 
> 
> It felt very out of character for the Doctor to call Jack Wrong, until I remembered Charley, and how he struggled with her temporal existence paradox. Going by the headcanon that Time Lords can 'see' the timelines (Otterchild's fanfics are EXCELLENT for this worldbuild, highly recommend), it makes sense to me that, as a Time Lord, the Doctor might be unintentionally racist/prejudiced against people unstuck in time due to his biology. Looking at Jack might be as bad as a rocking boat in a storm.
> 
> Originally posted to FFN 6/18/2007. Edited for spelling mistakes but otherwise posted in its original format.

" _In the end, I got the message: I'm the man who can never die. And all that time, you knew."_

" _It's why I left you behind. It's not easy, even just…Just looking at you Jack, 'cause you're_ wrong _."_

It's not a simple as he makes it sound. While the rest of the universe ebbs and flows like a constant tide, always moving and always changing, Jack is forever still, and it hurts. It takes effort to focus on him without cringing away. Like the Void ship, his vision just wants to roll, wants to slip the unease and discomfort that bubbles underneath his consciousness at being in the presence of the anomaly.

Jack is Charley all over again, unstuck in Time, and he remembers, for a while, it was just as hard to look at her. Though, her trace in the time continuum didn't quiver on the edge as Jack does, unable to move either back or fourth, blurring his existence; it's almost sea-sick to watch, and it's why he had to leave the Captain behind.

It's an anomaly he has to fix, but it's one he doesn't want to.

He couldn't do it to Charley. Jack was no different.

Even as he soaks in radiation, straining with the stiffness of the clamps, his figure is still blurred, ever so slightly, the disturbance registering on one of his more obscure senses.

He'd get used to it.

" _So what you're saying is that you're prejudiced?"_

" _I never thought of it like that."_

" _Shame on you."_

" _Yeah."_


End file.
